The way a young child uses language has an impact on their future life. Early language acquisition is a determinant in adult employment, mental health and relationships with others. At the same time there is a broad evidence base that play and learning in the natural environment is beneficial for young children's physical, emotional, social and…

In this article, I briefly review theories about the development of theory of mind, and then examine evidence for minimalism, the idea that infants initially understand only behaviors. To this end, I consider the need for a wide variety of species to predict the behaviors of other animals and that human infants are not unique in this regard. I…

This article offers insights into trends found in 74 empirical studies on teaching and learning a foreign language (FL) in pre-primary schools in 25 countries. The emerging picture is like that of primary-school programs: most are implemented in English, mostly owing to parents' enthusiasm rather than evidence on long term FL benefits. Researchers…

Human movement plays a foundational role in cognition and learning. This topical collection brings together theoretical and empirical work examining how gestures, physical activity, and virtual movement enhance learning in language, multimedia, and activity-based learning. Regarding language learning, interacting with virtual object improves…

Sensorimotor integration is an unconscious process of the brain incorporating multiple senses and movement. This review aimed to synthesize the literature on the role of visual-motor integration in language learning, whether spoken or signed, for deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) children. Nineteen peer-reviewed studies published between 1980 and…

Multilingual families face decisions about the linguistic upbringing of their children. These decisions shape their family language policy (FLP) which potentially impacts the children and their family. Departing from this hypothesis we conducted a systematic literature review applying the PRISMA guidelines, screening three databases, using search…

This study attempted to search the nature of language development and the relationship between vocal development and motor development in infancy, and it relied on the descriptive and qualitative approach and the method of content analysis to review and compare three researches related to the relationship of language development and physical…

This narrative review analyzes the visual and auditory advantages that autistic people with speech divergence (A-SD) may have compared with autistic people without speech divergence (A-NoSD) or non-autistic people. Importantly, A-SDs' intelligence and communication skills are often underestimated in research and practice. Further, this paper…

Developmental psychology focuses on how psychological constructs change with age. In cognitive development research, however, the specifics of this emergence is often underspecified. Researchers often provisionally assume linear growth by including chronological age as a predictor in regression models. In this work, we aim to evaluate this…

While extensive research has explored Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (SLVA) acquisition, there has been a lack of comprehensive bibliometric analysis on this topic. This study addresses this gap by investigating research trends and collaboration networks in SLVA over the past 24 years. Publications on SLVA were retrieved and analysed using…

This systematic review surveyed research on the associations between sleep and the memory processes involved in word learning in infancy. We found only 16 studies that addressed this topic directly, identifying associations between infant sleep and the memory processes, the identification of word forms in running speech, and the stabilization and…

The authors conduct a broad, cross-cultural review of the literature in fields such as psychology, education, speech-language pathology, early intervention, and library science concerned with board games and learning in young children. They include experimenter-developed and commercial board games and children's learning in mathematics, science,…

Prediction error plays a pivotal role in theories of learning, including theories of language acquisition and use. Researchers have investigated whether and under which conditions children, like adults, use prediction to facilitate language comprehension at different levels of linguistic representation. However, many aspects of the reciprocal…

As they develop into mature speakers of their native language, infants must not only learn words but also the sounds that make up those words. To do so, they must strike a balance between accepting speaker-dependent variation (e.g., mood, voice, accent) but appropriately rejecting variation when it (potentially) changes a word's meaning (e.g., cat…

Some meta-analyses have confirmed the efficacy of technology-enhanced vocabulary learning. However, they have not delved into the specific ways in which technology-based activities facilitate vocabulary acquisition, or into first-language vocabulary learning. We conducted a systematic review that retrieved 1,221 journal articles published between…